*Shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2020: Poetry*
Heide is an epic poem about history,painting, painters, patrons and the people who made art happen in Australia -from Louis Buvelot to Edith Rowan, Tom Roberts and Robert Streeton toVassilief, Nolan, Tucker, Joy Hester, the Boyds, Mirka Mora, and AlbertNamatjira, with a particular focus on the artists gathered around Sunday andJohn Reed at Heide in Melbourne.
It is a poem that explores the influence ofart and poetry on the psyche, and the influence of social class on both, fromthe upper echelons and industrialists of Melbourne, to the struggle of theworking class through such artists as Alisa O'Connor, Noel Counihan and YoslBergner. It begins with the foundation of Melbourne, and in its epic scopetraverses an encyclopaedic range of subjects, assembled from facts, quotations,proverbs, definitions, historical documents, newspaper accounts and theauthor's own reminiscences.
Heide isabout the poets and artists who put their lives on the line, the Australianpreoccupation with landscape, the dominance of a masculinist aesthetic, the sidelining anddenigration of Indigenous art, the struggle of women artists to assert theirinfluence and presence, and the impact of migration on Australian culture.
Itis a long poem made up of almost 300 poems, each bringing to life charactersand incidents that are fleshed out in vivid detail and with a dramaticintensity unique in Australian poetry.
